Clerk tells his side of salary story

The story titled “County Commissioner Critical of $32K in Last-Minute Bonuses” in The Coeur d’Alene Press on Oct. 20 paints a misleading picture of the compensation situation in Kootenai County.

If you only read the story, you might be left with the impression that my office has inappropriately distributed county funds that were unanimously ratified by the Board of County Commissioners on Oct. 10, 2019.

During Fiscal 2019, my office spent a lower percentage of budgeted personnel expenses than any other elected official’s departments in the county. I returned more than $200,000 allocated for personnel expense for the period after the $32,322 bonuses were distributed.

How does that compare with the other elected officials’ personnel expenses? I spent about 96% of the money allocated by the Board of County Commissioners for my division’s personnel expenses. Other elected officials spent 97% to 103% of budgeted personnel expenses. For the total fiscal 2019 budget, I only used approximately 85% of the total approved budget, which includes personnel, operating and capital expenses. This means the Clerk’s Division will be returning more than $900,000 to the county. Prudent financial management as well as dedicated staff have yielded this large savings.

The newspaper wrongly stated that I awarded bonuses up to $2,500 this fiscal year, but the largest total bonus to any individual employee in the Clerk’s Division was $1,600. Nine other employees in other departments received $2,000 or more, with five bonuses at $2,500.

While budgets and expenditures of county funds are always newsworthy, bonuses are a tiny portion of total county spending. The dollar value of bonuses awarded to all county employees in all departments was less than 1/1000 of the total county budget, or 0.00095.

I’m concerned that stories like this are less about ensuring fiscal responsibility and more about a County Commissioner’s attempts to portray himself as a budget hawk going into his re-election next spring.

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Jim Brannon is Kootenai County clerk.